| Three questions motivate this project: How does science come to explain elusive, abstract concepts such as 'life' and 'mind'? From the failure of vitalist theories in the early 20th century, can anything be inferred about modern dualist theories of mind? And can the history of the life sciences provide any positive methodological guidance for approaching the problem of consciousness?; The sciences of life and mind span many levels of analysis, and thus raise philosophical questions about inter-level explanation and integration. I argue that the usual way of framing such questions (in terms of theories and reduction) is inadequate, and propose an alternative: the Domain Integration model, which places a greater emphasis on the structure and dynamics of scientific inquiry rather than on the relations among scientific theories . I then put the model to use in an extended investigation of historical advances in the sciences of life and mind, with a special focus on the interplay of mechanist and holist research strategies. This investigation is structured by an analogy between vitalism and dualism, and one of its goals is to illustrate the process whereby seemingly insurmountable conceptual barriers to scientific explanation are eventually surmounted.; Turning to more theoretical issues, I argue that 'reducibility' is an implausible and unuseful standard of inter-level connectivity, and that Domain Integration is better suited to the task of describing the actual structure of evolving, multi-level sciences. In a related analysis I demonstrate that materialism and dualism, traditionally construed as claims about the ultimate structure of reality, become more coherent and useful when reinterpreted as methodological commitments to integrationist or anti-integrationist research strategies. Both positions remain tenable on this reinterpretation, but methodological materialism is substantially easier to justify. Finally, I apply this framework to the problem of consciousness, arguing that the goal of inquiry should be to close the conceptual gap between mental and physical, and that views which urge us to take consciousness as "basic" or "fundamental" are therefore deeply misguided. Drawing again on the historical analogy with biology, I conclude that a methodology of incremental, multifactorial, integrationist explanation of consciousness is possible, desirable---and underway. |
